There’s nothing wrong with a McDonald’s or Jack in the Box burger now and then. You’re a college student — sometimes you need something quick and cheap.

But every once in awhile, you’ve got to treat yo’ self. That’s where this guide comes in. These are some of the best places to grab a burger in Eugene (and sometimes a brew while you’re at it).

We’ll cover two different types of Eugene shops: Joints dedicated perfecting their craft between two buns and restaurants that offer a variety of menu items but have a strong burger game.

Apologies to Caspian, Rennie’s, Taylor’s and Webfoot.

Dedicated burger joints

Little Big Burger

1404 Orchard St.
541-357-4771

Little Big Burger sits right beneath the Skybox and Courtside apartments on Orchard Street. (Taylor Wilder/Emerald)

You’ll find this place right under the Skybox and Courtside apartments off Franklin Boulevard on Orchard Street. The name pretty much tells you what you’re in for. But you know what they say: Big things come in small packages. These are still quarter-pound patties — they’re just packed together to look much smaller. Don’t make the same mistake as one particular Emerald reporter and order four of them just because they look — as he said at the time — “like nothin’.” These tiny burgers pack a wallop.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries

495 W. Seventh Ave.
541-357-4749

The Five Guys in Eugene is located on Sixth Avenue next to Starbucks. (Eder Campuzano/Emerald)

Yeah, we know it’s a chain. But it’s not like we’re sending you to Burger King or anything. Five Guys has two locations within driving distance of the UO: One in West Eugene and another near Gateway Mall in Springfield. In addition to burgers, Five Guys has a decent offering of hot dogs. One of the chain’s gimmicks — not that anyone’s complaining — is that there’s a bottomless well of peanuts situated near the cash register to give you something to do in the event of a woefully long line. There’s one way to avoid the wait: Order online.

Killer Burger

50 W. Broadway
541-636-4731

Anthony Lee preps a burger during the Tuesday rush. Killer Burger, which just moved into Eugene last year, sits near the corner of Willamette Street and Broadway. (Eder Campuzano/Emerald)

Killer Burger may be the newest joint on this list, but don’t mistake that for amateurism. It’s part of the wave of businesses that are transforming downtown Eugene into a little slice of Portland (That’s where the chain got its start). What separates Killer Burger from the rest of the pack is its use of patties that are 1/3 pound. Oh, and did I mention that the bacon is free? That and a full bar makes this a favorite for the over 21 crowd. Don’t forget to try the Peanut-Butter-Pickle-Bacon Burger. Trust me.

Dickie Jo’s Burgers

1079 Valley River Way
541-868-1271

Dickie Jo’s is now located near Valley River Center on Valley River Way. (Eder Campuzano/Emerald)

This locally-owned chain is a spinoff of the Mucho Gusto Mexican food joints, which also includes a frozen yogurt place on Valley River Way and a barbecue restaurant on 13th Avenue (Bill and Tim’s, also run by the same company, Westraunt Concepts). Although there’s now only one Dickie Jo’s next to the Valley River Center —there were once three — it’s still worth a visit. What makes Dickie Jo’s special is the garlic fries that come with only a minor upgrade charge. Aside from that, they just make a damn good burger. And there’s coffee right next door.

Restaurants with great burgers

Cornucopia

295 W. 17th Ave.
541-485-2300

Timothy Freeman prepares a burger on a Tuesday afternoon. Cornucopia has two locations in Eugene. The downtown location sits near the corner of Fifth Avenue and Pearl Street. (Eder Campuzano/Emerald)

Burger and brew: Mondays. $11.99 for any burger on the menu and your choice of beer.

This place is not for the claustrophobic. Cornucopia excels in ambiance. The place is seldom empty and it’s pretty easy to see why: The folks in the kitchen come up with some of the most inventive burgers you’ll find in Eugene. Wild Bill’s Bacon BBQ Burger isn’t just a mouthful, it’s probably one of the tastiest things you’ll encounter in your time here. Like most places, you’ll find an inventive appetizer menu with a myriad of options for fries. The great thing here is that you can always order a pound of seasoned potatoes.

Sixth Street Grill

55 W. Sixth Ave.
541-485-2961

Burger and brew: Tuesdays. $8 for any burger on the menu and your choice of beer.

Die-hard Duck fans will feel right at home here. The walls are decked with Oregon memorabilia, from jerseys to banners and everything in between. The centerpiece is a wooden scoreboard that shows the Ducks running up the score against the Fuskies (Because huck those guys, amirite?) This place is also in a great location. The Hult Center is right across the street, making this a prime place to go after a performance. Sixth Street might just be the hardest on your wallet (Most appetizers come in at around $10), but you won’t be thinking much about that once the burgers come.

McMenamins

1243 High St.
541-345-4905

1485 E. 19th Ave.
541-342-4025

22 Club Rd.
541-343-5622

Human physiology major Liz Mannering (left) and biology major Katie Williamson sit down for a meal at the McMenamins on 19th Avenue. (Eder Campuzano/Emerald)

Burger and brew: Mondays. $10.50 for a six-ounce burger and your choice of McMenamins ales.

If you lived in any sizable town or city in Oregon, chances are that you’ve been to McMenamins. But that also means you know each site has its own unique flair. The Eugene locations are no different. The High Street shop is a bit smaller and cozy with a big outdoor area. The North Bank location is situated right on the Willamette — if you’re looking for a great outdoor space on a spring day, look no further. The 19th Avenue shop offers pool, shuffleboard and a larger indoor area. As always, Cajun tots are the perfect way to start the meal no matter where you are.

Agate Alley Bistro

1461 E. 19th Ave.
541-485-8887

Bue Brown pours a beer during the Tuesday afternoon rush. Agate Alley Bistro sits next to McMenamins on 19th Avenue. (Eder Campuzano)

Although it’s the only place on this list without a burger and brew deal, what Agate Alley lacks in an adult combo meal it more than makes up for with great drink specials. If you’re looking for a quieter, more spacious atmosphere, ask for a table in the back. The bar sits at the front of the restaurant, and every Thursday it’s the site of the Drink Wheel: The staff spins it every half hour to indicate a different $3 special. Flaming Dr Peppers? Irish Car Bombs? They’re all here. And Wednesdays you get econopints: Every beer on tap is $2.50.

Follow Eder Campuzano on Twitter @edercampuzano

Nearly every year, there’s a slew of ballot measures students vote on during elections season on DuckWeb. Unfortunately, it’s a bit tough to make an informed decision if you’re not well-versed in ASUO language and processes. Here, we wade through the jargon, so you don’t have to.

Oregon Solar Energy Advisory Statement

The University of Oregon chapter of OSPIRG is behind this ballot measure, which would send a letter to Gov. Kate Brown supporting the Go Solar Oregon campaign. Doing so would tell the governor that the UO student body collectively supports the campaign’s goals. The organization collected 1,500 signatures from students supporting the measure.

A yes vote would send the letter to Brown on behalf of UO students, which would ask the university to increase its capacity to consume solar energy from 0.02 percent to 10 percent by 2025. A no vote means no message would be sent.

Program Directors’ Council amendments

The Program Directors’ Council is a group composed of representatives from every group officially recognized by the ASUO. The council currently meets twice per term. There are 160 members.

A yes vote would only require the council to meet once per term. It would also give the Executive the ability to place sanctions on groups whose representatives don’t attend the meetings. A no vote would change nothing. 

Constitution Court justice removal

The Constitution Court is tasked with upholding the ASUO’s official rules (think of it as the student government analogue to the U.S. Supreme Court.) If the ASUO Senate moves to remove a member of the court, 12 senators voting in favor of the motion can pass the motion.

A yes vote would require a three-quarter majority vote in the ASUO Senate to remove a member of the Constitution Court. A no vote maintains the 12-senator vote needed to remove Con Court members.

The post This is what all three of the ballot measures you’re voting on this week mean appeared first on Emerald Media.

On Monday, we wrote about how the EMU is losing some of its food services starting next term.

The Buzz is shuttering. The Fishbowl café is also closing. Say “so long” to Panda Express. But the University of Oregon’s student union isn’t just losing the places where students get their grub on. No, sir. We’re losing a part of history.

Check out the following clip from the 1978 classic, Animal House:

From the architecture of the food court to the white building outside of those enormous windows, anyone who has attended the UO in the last half century will get a serious sense of deja vu when they watch John Belushi start one of the most well-known food fights to ever hit the silver screen. Yep, that’s the Fishbowl.

The common area has hosted everything from ASUO debates to Oregon football watch parties and even a Pokémon tournament or two. This year, the Fishbowl café scaled back its offerings to the morning essentials: coffee, bagels and pastries. But, if you take a look at the preceding clip and stroll through the area, it’s easy to tell that it’s due for an upgrade.

The Fishbowl is, after all, nearly 65 years old. Take a gander at the overview page for the EMU renovation project. The café’s digs were presented to the student body in 1950, a full 23 years before the student union got its next upgrade.

The newest renovation effort isn’t purely cosmetic — a few new businesses, including Chipotle and Falling Sky Brewery, are in the process of vying for a spot in the new UO student union building.

But the EMU isn’t the first Animal House filming location to get a facelift. You won’t see this room at the UO anymore:

That’s Fenton 110. And it doesn’t look anything like it did before. But fret not: Plenty of the UO locales that hosted the Animal House crew aren’t going anywhere. You can check out the full list of places in and around Eugene where John Landis and his crew shot the film, from the now-artificial fields behind the Student Recreation Center to downtown Cottage Grove:

Follow Eder Campuzano on Twitter @edercampuzano

The post Watch ‘Animal House’ and check out how little the EMU Fishbowl has changed over the years appeared first on Emerald Media.

The University of Oregon has dropped its counterclaim against the lawsuit filed by a student alleging that men’s basketball coach Dana Altman and other administrators acted negligently in recruiting Brandon Austin.

“What we did today was we submitted an amended answer and we took the counterclaims about the attorney’s fees out of the document. The rest of the response to the lawsuit is still the same,” interim President Scott Coltrane told The Emerald during a phone interview.

Coltrane made the final decision to withdraw the counterclaim, although several members of the administration, campus leaders and general counsel weighed in.

The president’s office published a statement on Thursday afternoon, saying that “By dropping the counterclaims, my hope is that we can leave the legal matters to the court so we can dedicate our attention to the important work of preventing and responding to sexual violence.”

A petition circulated the web earlier in the week calling for the UO to reconsider its counterclaim. It contained more than 1,500 signatures.

“In reflecting on it, we’re really trying to end sexual violence. It’s about who we are and how we relate to each other on campus and how we can get better at stopping sexual violence and helping people who experienced those horrible things,” Coltrane said. “The counterclaims were getting in the way of that so we just got rid of them.”

UO spokesperson Julie Brown, in an email to The Emerald, mentioned then that the university would not seek monetary compensation in its countersuit. Tobin Klinger said the same thing.”

“The counterclaim is directed at the Colorado-based attorneys,” he wrote in an email to The Emerald. “The goal is to hold the plaintiff’s attorneys responsible for their actions in bringing forth false allegations to leverage a difficult and unfortunate situation for their own financial gain.”

Alexandra Cremer is also an author for this post. Follow her (@alex_cremer92) and Eder (@edercampuzano) on Twitter.

The post University of Oregon drops sexual assault counterclaim amid public outcry appeared first on Emerald Media.

The University of Oregon acrobatics and tumbling team lost freshman Lauren Jones on Tuesday night.

University officials say the cause of death could have been a bacterial infection. Teammates and other members of the Oregon athletics community expressed their feelings for Jones on Twitter for hours after the announcement of her passing.

If you’d like to share a memory of Lauren, please use the form below. We’ll compile a list and publish them later this evening.

The only information we ask you to provide is your name. If you’d like to be contacted by an Emerald reporter, feel free to leave a phone number or email address.

Three years ago, we set out to do something different.

We tore down our traditional daily newspaper and created something new. We began publishing two weekly newsmagazines: Emerald Monday and Emerald Wknd. We focused on bringing you the news early in the week and help plan your weekends with our Thursday edition.

We ditched the philosophy that we should hold a story until the paper came out. “Let’s hold it for print” isn’t something you’ll hear in Suite 300. It’s that kind of thinking that got people to notice what we were doing.

It’s also what got us to decide that our web presence could be more than it was.

DailyEmerald.com as we’ve known it has served us well since we launched The Revolution, the ongoing movement to innovate and prepare our student staffers for the journalism jobs of tomorrow. But it lacked a few key features that our readers and staff have expressed an interest in seeing.

Starting today, we’ll have related story sidebars for every single post on DailyEmerald.com. We’re moving our commenting system from a the login-based Disqus service to Facebook — no more pesky email registration or passwords to remember.

We’re also bringing a longstanding Emerald brand to the web: GameDay. We’ve produced special sections for Oregon sports for nearly three decades now. From football to men’s basketball and track and field, GameDay has been there to give you behind-the-scenes looks at what’s happening on the court, the gridiron and beyond.

We’re also giving two of our newer features a permanent place in our navigation bar.

We started the year with a small innovation team that’s designed to produce longform multimedia stories for the University of Oregon community. They’re the best our staff has to offer. If we were still a daily newspaper, these are the stories that would make the front page. That’s why we’re calling them E1, a play on what The New York Times, The Oregonian and other dailies call their front page (A1, for the uninitiated.)

Our staffers — from news and sports to arts and culture — have also been hard at work producing podcasts on SoundCloud. These pieces now have their own home in the new navigation bar under multimedia. Check some of them out.

Our new site interface is more user-friendly than before, loaded with more entry points to all of our content and custom-built to get you where you want to go.

Welcome.

Patrick Kindred will remain in custody until Feb. 19 following his second appearance at the Lane County Jail on Thursday morning.

The courtroom was packed as 30 friends, family and University of Oregon administrators attended to the proceeding in order to support Kindred.

“We’re concerned about all of our students and Patrick is one of our students,” Dean of Students Paul Shang said.

Kindred served as the external vice president for ASUO until his arrest on Monday evening. ASUO President Beatriz Gutierrez has placed Kindred on leave as she and other members of the Executive take on his duties.

He was arrested at the 7-Eleven on 13th Avenue for alleged criminal trespassing. Kindred faces other charges as well.

The second episode of Better Call Saul again starts with a callback to Breaking Bad. This time, we pick up right where we left off on Sunday night in a situation not unlike one of the first real debacles Walter White and Jesse Pinkman face.

He’s back (Or, more like, we’re meeting him in his first chronological appearance in the Gilligan-verse.) And we got here as a result of a scam gone wrong. Jimmy and a couple of kids were trying to stage an accident with one of McGill’s prospective clients in an effort to sway her to employ his services.

But instead of a well-to-do white woman in her 30s, Jimmy’s compatriots have a run-in with an elderly Mexican woman. When James and the gang track her down, they get a little more than they bargained for.

Which brings us to the present. “Mijo,” the second episode of the series, opens with Tuco frying up a bit of grub, a great callback to one of the last things we saw him do in Breaking Bad.

Tuco confronts Jimmy’s accomplices as they try to shake down his abuelita and knocks them out cold. And when Jimmy shows up, well, you know what happens.

And herein lies one of the purposes “Mijo” serves for Better Call Saul. The parallels between James McGill’s and Walter White’s run-ins with Tuco thematically pull the shows together. But the way Jimmy handles the drug runner shows us just how close, how capable he is of being the shifty lawyer we know and love.

Tuco says it best: “Wow, you’ve got a mouth on you.”

The first episode of the series established Jimmy McGill as an incapable, down-on-his luck guy who’s just trying to get his practice off the ground. Saul Goodman is in there somewhere, but McGill hasn’t quite found him yet.

We see James get a little closer. We also see more of Breaking Bad’s DNA showing up. Saul and his accomplices are bound in the basement. He gets dragged to the desert where he’s threatened by Tuco and his associates (at one point, with a box cutter, no less). There’s even a moment when one of Tuco’s cronies pipes in with suggestions on how to dismember his victims and the crazed drug dealer threatens him. And we all remember the way that ends up.

But it’s the way that James handles it all, the way he talks his way out of certain death and gets Tuco to spare the lives of his accomplices that sheds light on the kind of guy he is.

If Breaking Bad is Mr. Chips turning into Scarface, then Better Call Saul is the story of a man coming to accept with his shortcomings and embracing his place as a world-class talker.

The major difference between Walt and Jimmy is that the latter shows us some semblance of remorse, of a conscience.

After Tuco breaks the skateboarders’ legs, Jimmy pays for the trip to Urgent Care. Sure, Walter White paid his share of bills, but the difference here is that Jimmy has little, if anything, left to give. It’s not like he’s giving up hundreds of thousands out of the millions of dollars that Walter made during the second through fifth seasons of Breaking Bad.

That’s also what gets Jimmy running back to the courthouse to take cases as a public defender, a job he swore off at the beginning of the series premiere. We then segue into a montage where Jimmy takes on court case after court case, battling fellow attorneys and Mike Ermantraut the parking attendant along the way. That’s more of the signature Breaking Bad DNA seeping through, albeit in a lighter tone than we’re used to.

Stray observations:

• Say what you will about the Salamancas, but they take care of their own.

• “Turns out your darling abuelita drives a car that looks an awful lot like the Kettlemobile.”

• “An eye for an eye … you want me to blind them …”

• Saul is a damn good lawyer. You’d have to be if you’re dealing with a lunatic like Tuco.

• Those traffic stickers are a metaphor for every time you got to your car just in time to see the University of Oregon parking attendant leave a yellow envelope on your windshield.

Follow Eder Campuzano on Twitter: @edercampuzano

Breaking Bad went out with a bang almost a year and a half ago. Its brand-new successor, the Bob Odenkirk-driven Better Call Saul, is already shaping up to live up to what Vince Gilligan and his crew established when he took a plucky druggie and his former chemistry teacher on a journey to create a drug empire.

Here’s what The Emerald’s Craig Wright and Eder Campuzano thought of “Uno,” the pilot episode of Better Call Saul.

Craig’s take:

Better Call Saul begins with a silent black-and-white intro of Bob Odenkirk as a faceless Cinnabon employee with nothing in the world.

Obstructed camera views and out-of-focus shots follow Odenkirk home where he sits in a recliner living through his “Better Call Saul” VHS tapes. The cherry on top of this intro is that in this new, hopeless life post fall of the Heisenberg empire is that he is dressed as Walter White.

Even though Walter ruined Saul’s life and forced him to live a life of obscure anonymity, the desire to live with any attachment to White is all he has left of his previous identity.

The show exists in the Breaking Bad universe. It acknowledges the fact that Breaking Bad came first and Gilligan hints at what is yet to come. After losing a hopeless trial as a public defender, Jimmy McGill retreats to his beat up rust yellow Suzuki Esteem, parked in the shadow of a white Cadillac DeVille, the kind that Saul Goodman will one day “LWYRUP” in.

Breaking Bad’s pilot began with a flash, but in reality, it was probably one of the weaker episodes of the series as it evolved into something exponentially better. Saul is already intriguing after one episode.

It is clear that Saul will share the character development and superfluous schemes of Breaking Bad.

In co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s world, characters cannot begin as the hero. They have to evolve from a down-on-their luck ordinary guy before transcending into the antihero.

Jimmy McGill starts as an out-of-luck loser desperate to make a new life for himself, much like Walter. The difference is that Walt always had at least a partial answer to every problem he faced.

It already appears as if Jimmy is going to face problems he can’t overcome. With Gilligan at the helm, anything can happen.

This is good news for everyone suffering from Breaking Bad withdrawals.

Eder’s take:

The opening of Better Call Saul might just be more heart-breaking than most anything that happened on Breaking Bad. The decline of the Heisenberg empire turned Saul Goodman into Walter White.

Over the course of six years and five seasons, we became accustomed to Walter elegantly bumbling through his rise as a drug kingpin. Sure, he had the textbook know-how to make the best damn meth on the planet, but Walter’s shortcomings as a businessman and criminal, were evident the moment he had to resort to chaining Crazy 8 to a post in his basement with a U-Lock.

You could write novels about the trials and tribulations that Jesse Pinkman faced as he went from thug to semi-reputable businessman.

Not so with Saul Goodman. He had everything figured out. When Walt and Jesse had Saul at gunpoint in the middle of the desert, the shifty lawyer called their bluff. He knew how to launder their money. He knew his shit. James McGill doesn’t.

When we meet the man who will become Saul Goodman, he’s driving a shoddy, yellow Suzuki Esteem. His office is the boiler room of a nail salon (The very same nail salon he tries to convince the Whites to use as a means to launder Walt’s drug money.) But he’s got that Saul Goodman spirit.

He may not know exactly how to employ his knowledge of the judicial system quite yet, but ol’ Jimmy’s trying to figure it out.

And that is a pretty good way to describe just how Better Call Saul is doing after one night on the air. As soon as the music starts on the black-and-white opening of “Uno,” the pilot episode, it’s painfully clear that this is a Vince Gilligan & Peter Gould production. His signature style is imbued in every shot, every line of dialogue, every scene. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t do much to differentiate itself from its parent show.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not good by any measure. No, Better Call Saul is shaping up to be pretty freaking great.

The fact that Jonathan Banks only shows up in a minor scene in the first few minutes of “Uno” says a lot about what Gilligan and company are trying to do with this show. It’s flashes of Breaking Bad that skew more toward the eccentrics perpetuated by the titular shady lawyer.

Stray observations:

• Mike is a parking lot attendant. A parking lot attendant. Oddly fitting.

• “The only way that hunk of junk is worth $500 is if there’s a $300 hooker sittin’ in it!”

• Hit and run or bailed ahd whaled?

Better Call Saul airs at 10 p.m. on Sundays. The second episode of the two-part premiere airs Monday, Feb. 9 at 10 p.m. AMC, sometimes we will never understand why you do things.

Follow Craig Wright (@wgwcraig) and Eder Campuzano (@edercampuzano) on Twitter.

This week saw plenty of news break, from the closure of a fast-food mainstay to the recruiting of some top talent for Oregon football.

Each story drove sizable traffic to DailyEmerald.com. It engaged you on Facebook and Twitter. Or maybe you saw it but didn’t have time to give the article a glance.

That’s what I’m here for. I’ll bring you the top headlines from Emerald sports, news, entertainment and opinion every Friday afternoon.

These are the stories that set the UO community abuzz during the fourth week of winter term in 2015:

Sports

•Five-star  quarterback recruit Kyler Murray will get an at-home visit from Oregon football officials

•Marcus Mariota’s younger brother, Matthew, will join Oregon football as a walk-on

•Sam Kamp announced that he will, indeed, graduate in the spring and leave Oregon football

•Three-star linebacker recruit Fotu Leiato commits to Oregon

•Junior guard Chloe Stiles was dismissed from the women’s basketball team after failing a random drug test

News

• UO Matters editor and econ professor Bill Harbaugh attained and returned 22,000 pages of university records, which administrators say were released unlawfully

• UOPD is warning students and faculty about email scams that target international students in particular

• The UO published the president’s job description in anticipation of the search for a new top administrator

Campus culture

• Wendy’s closed without warning

• And we have eight suggestions for what should replace it

• Our Still Alice review resonated with those looking for a meaningful story about living with Alzheimer’s

• Fall Out Boy’s American Beauty/American Psycho is the album you love to hate

• Be nicer to the kids from California, please

Just a little light reading.

Follow Eder Campuzano on Twitter: @edercampuzano